Was trying to put together a bonemonger aether dual wield pistol Paladin build last night, and…the AA aether pistol options looks like the toilet paper selection at costco right now.
https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/9373 - Gotta go down to the blues to find the first aether damage pistol with AS. Stats are pretty junk and doesn’t really support an AA build with +necro and +arcanist as skill bonuses
What I would love to see is an aether pistol with attack speed, possibly global pierce -> aether as that path doesn’t exist currently, bonuses to righteous fervor and fire strike, some array of the inquisitor skills (death sentence I assume would make most sense if not general +1), and maybe necro or arcanist if the stat budget isn’t somehow spent already. Alternatively could be a split aether fire pistol. Either way, skill mods like:
phys->aether on RF
lightning and chaos->aether on fire strike
Think this would allow for some different ranged AA attack builds using aether, since right now it’s basically Vortex of Souls or Dread Scorcher or nothing (and 2x albrecht duality for fire strike).
I don’t know what 1.1.7 holds on the aether pistol front, but if it does stay dry, a minor request:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDEw7pN is smooth SR65 at this point if not somewhat slow, but AoE suffers and doesn’t have an easy solution. Rather than another pass through gun request, I’d love to see the aether missiles proc tweaked for Soulflayer with either moar missiles or 2-3x radius increase. Give more thematic flavor to one of the few aether focused AA guns available.
Feel free to ignore this if sassy new pistols are coming
Hmm. I think try again. The proc on soulflayer is actually quite potent by itself, almost 900 damage per 1.5 seconds per proc is pretty nice dps against boss. Full Auto-attack version should work.
I find the build you theorycrafted to be a little weird, especially the devotions.
Did you try magelord rings? Ulzuin fall rune would be a nice free AoE skill. Imp on vire might would be nice (even on siphon would be a nice boost for AoE damage) and Spear devotion? Not sure I would bother investing so much into caster skills, Bone Harvest has 0 item support. Max smite is worthwhile.
Also will of rattosh on aether corruption is very inefficient.
Eh, that’s fair, still in tweaking stage, but would love to see a bit more radius specific for the pistol proc over green.
No on magelords, I’d grab some cold flat but would lose maxish vit conversion without switching to the +1 arcanist belt. Also get no skill support, although this setup does actually have extra points to play with.
The smite suggestion is interesting though, I’m used to not having extra points to pump into WPS, and it pierces so will try that out tonight.
Devotions are still undergoing minor tweaks but current layout has actually provided most consistent sustain, which has kept me focusing on max vit -> aether conversion.
Magelord give up to 60% more conversion as opposed to ~30% more vit conversion. Your build only needs higher Vit conversion because of those Vit devotions you chose.
Magelord are very good for the smite, imp and Ulzuin Fall idea (as well as conversion of arcane bomb, Spear, Aether corruption and medal proc). As well you’d getting more flat damage from Soul Harvest + Hydra + medal flat elemental.
As for imp + VM. Vire Might is one of the best procer in the game I think. I would guess the proc chance will be 40% or so, which is ~5 imp procs per Vire Might cast against a single target. Total damage of 3.4k flat aether over ~7 seconds (provided target is stationary), quite nice damage for one action.
Well, this is probably more of an aside or build thread discussion unless you think imp and spear or going to make up that much AoE. That said, doing some more 65-66 and 75-76 runs last night, I’ll retract some of the AoE concerns. Ultimately I’d still love to see some additional aether pistol AA options as SoulFlayer is basically the beginning and end of the discussion right now.
Smite change appears positive. Bone harvest was still up because I was playing around with using the conduit, but since it doesn’t affect soul harvest, meh, so that was a good point change call out.
Looks like magelord would gain 11.6 base damage extra converting the cold on soul harvest vs final 30% vit for soul harvest and harbinger. Bigger gain is indeed on the WPS where it averages out to a 77.1 base damage gain. + skills can be made up, I think magi ring proc would still outrun magelord but that’s fairly minor.
Will give this a shot tonight using a more standard elemental to aether tree with imp and spear. Part of this was just fully embracing the vit conversion and the different devo paths it opens up. I suspect sustain is going to take a big hit but won’t matter if the converted devo damage and extra on the WPS kill stuff that much faster. With tweaks last night it’s very smooth in SR65 but starts falls off with more deaths in the SR75 range.
Soulflayer is indeed the only viable aether 1h gun. I don’t think there necessarily should be more than one though, as there are not for other damage types either.
Just one which can go auto-attack mode, which was what I was suggesting may already be possible with the existing soulfalyer. Gotta get creative to make it workable for sure though
EDIT: IIRC imp can only proc once per second on siphon soul, so that won’t work. VM or nothing I guess.
